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Slashdot. Seriously? The Post button is all but completely hidden and elements are randomly overlaying other elements. Sigs are on top of the reply links. "You may like to read links" overlay the "voting on submissions" text. Buttons appear and disappear as you hover over them. Everything just has a smashed-together feel.

Touché. I guess I wasn't clear. #define lets you change which symbol you use to enclose code blocks. But when you said your language should give you a choice, I thought you meant "a choice between using indentation and using block enclosing symbols."

I started with BASIC on a TRS-80 myself. I am convinced it gave me a certain level of brain damage that took years to remove. On the TRS-80, everything interesting (graphics, sound) had to be done by poking into memory anyways, so it's not like BASIC gave me any powerful constructs to do those things. Mostly it got in the way. Honestly, C would have been better.

But that's besides the point. I agree with you that C is a bad language for a beginner these days, but for the reasons you cited, not the ones in the summary. Specifically, because it is boring, not because it is "complex".

I use Python every day and I love it, but he may have a point about variable declaration. Statically typed languages are important to learn about.

I do find it hard to imagine what other constructs he is teaching his beginners that cannot be done in Python. Anonymous functions, maybe? Does VB do that yet? It didn't when I last used it. Tail-end recursion? I don't think VB does that either.

But with so many languages to choose from, VB seems like it would be way down on the list.

I also disagree about C being "incredibly complex for a beginner". I found C to be very easy to grasp and very good at exposing what the computer is actually doing under the hood. I would agree that programming C well is complex (and also time-consuming), but that is because it is simple, not because it is complex.

Volcker kept ratcheting up interest rates to stop inflation and it wasn't working because while it brought down demand, it also brought down productivity because it became more and more expensive to borrow for capital investment. Reagan's policies were designed to combat the problem of low productivity. An increase in payroll taxes also served to dampen demand which also helped reduce inflation. I still contend that these were the right policy decisions at the time.

Reagan is not to blame for the fact that later Republican politicians (and constituencies) refused to change course when the economic situation changed.

The mid to late 70's was NOT prosperous for the middle class. Interest rates were nearly 20% and inflation was huge as well. The US was suffering simultaneously from low productivity and high inflation. Reagan's solution was to boost productivity by cutting taxes and regulation. And, while it took a couple of years, it worked.

Yes, this led to a situation ripe for growing inequality, but the real problem is that self-described "conservatives" think that since Reagan's recipe for fighting "stagflation" worked once, it is the solution to every economic problem which it is not. Today the US (along with most of the world) is dealing with unhealthily LOW interest rates and inflation. Large businesses are sitting on giant piles of cash while many households have unhealthy levels of debt. Yet the so-called "conservatives" want to fight our problems with "Reaganomics" instead of developing new solutions that fit today's problems.

I remember the 70s. I have no idea how anyone could think it was a "golden age". We had high inflation, high unemployment, terrible service and low quality products and were only just starting to recover from all the many ways we had been poisoning our environment with lead, pesticides and sulfur.

Social skills and teamwork ability are great things to have, but when these words are used in relation to a job, they invariably mean submitting to existing hierarchies. If I refuse to be a paid slave that doesn't make me an antisocial egotist.

No, but your demeaning description of how 95% of the world earns their living kinda does.